Health Organization for Pudendal Education

Hi,

I'm a 37 yr old active male and I'm fairly certain I'm suffering from acute onset bike seat neuropathy, but was hoping someone could comment because I haven't found any detailed listing of symptoms.

After having been off the road bike for sometime I went out for a ride on a Saturday afternoon. During the ride I had shifted myself more forward on the seat due to a knee pain issue. I road for an hour (~30km) during which my perineum and penis had some pain and I think slight numbness. Upon stopping my first urination was very painful. Throughout the day and into the next day urination was painful (pretty sure this wasn't dehydration). On Sunday evening I had intercourse with my wife and found erection and ejaculation to be painful too. In the following few days I have had a general discomfort in my perineum and penis, urination pain seems to come and go. I have also at times felt like I needed to pee when I barely had any volume to it.

I had a similar incident after getting back to cycling a number of years before and thought it might have been a bladder infection or something. Of course the tests came back negative and I remember it taking a good week or two to resolve itself.

So do these symptoms sound like bike seat neuropathy? I have since stopped riding altogether as this is definitely not a comfortable situation and I don't want to aggravate it any further.

Thanks for any comment/advice etc.

Hi luke42

If you look on the home page there is a link in the left hand margin to a list of symptoms - bike neuropathy or cyclists syndrome. It may be worth printing off to take to your doctor.

Rosemary

Hi Luke,

The pudendal nerve goes to the bladder sphincter. Problems with urination and sex such as you are describing are very common for people with pudendadal neuropathy but I can't say for sure that's what's going on with you. Hopefully if you stay off the bike the symptoms will go away. Are you using any type of special bike seat to prevent PN neuropathy? If you want to be more proactive than just taking a wait-and-see if it goes away stance, you could try seeing a physical therapist who treats people with pelvic pain/pudendal neuralgia to see if that gives you any relief.

Amarenco was one of the first to publish on cyclist's syndrome and pudendal neuropathy. Here's a link to one of his publications http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7971823, with more to the right of link but unfortunately, there are no abstracts available or free versions that I can find.

Take care,

Violet

Yes Luke I think you already realise that staying off the bike for a while is what is needed for a resolution. Has it made any difference yet? It really is not worth taking the risk in my opinion as there are many other sports you can participate in without problems.
I do remember someone posting about a different seat that had helped him but hopefully you are not that desperate to get on your bike again and can avoid the problem altogether.
I do hope that things improve quickly.
Take care,
Helen